The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 15

SATURDAY, February 16, 1991 The Sun A15 0 The Sun BROOKS JOHNSON Publisher ARNOLD H. GARSON Editor MIKE WHITEHEAD Managing Editor MARIE SAULSBURY Managing EditorSunday RICHARD S. KIMBALL Editorial Page Editor on Editorials fx XL Administrator walks fine line fft Linda Ellerbee Bush's lips: Read 'em Air war can win; Army won't like it fJ Donald The tightrope act of San Bernardino City Administrator Shauna Edwins shows the difficulties that officials face in keeping private domestic concerns separate from their public responsibilities. When developer John Edwins married then-City Clerk Shauna Clark in June 1989, he said that he wouldn't build in San Bernardino and that he would sell property he owned in the city to avoid the appearance of conflict of interests. That was more easily said than done.

Longstanding business ties cannot always be neatly and promptly severed. Thus, the couple finds itself confronted with unwieldy situations like John Edwins' current involvement in a controversial townhouse development project on Foothill Drive east of Sterling Avenue. Although she was careful to disclose the matter and to route paperwork involving the issue away from her desk, Shauna Edwins says she believes her transition from clerk to administrator has made the couple less vulnerable to conflicts of interests. "I'm not an elected official anymore. I'm appointed.

I'm under the supervision of the mayor and council," she said. "I actually had a lot more power as an elected official than I have as city administrator." Shauna Edwins said she has no control over planning decisions, which are made in the form of recommendations by staff to planning commissioners, who are appointed by the council. Only the council can overturn planning commission rulings. While all of that may be so, it would be naive to believe that the potential for conflicts has been minimized by her job change. Most city department heads, including those dealing with questions of planning and public works, report to the city administrator.

Therefore, all of their subordinates report up the chain of command to Edwins. Consequently, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that staff members who prepare data upon which commission and council decisions do so with the preferences of the city administrator in mind. But even if we assume that Edwins could, in fact, distance herself from influencing the decisions made by the planning staff, there would still be a complication resulting from the conflicting interests. Edwins would, in effect, be abdicating her supervisory responsibility as city administrator. Thus, even though all indications are that Shauna Edwins has bent over backwards to scrupulously distance herself from decision-making situations that might affect her husband, a conflict remains, and it works against the best interest of the public.

Current standards of public judgment are much more rigorous in demanding a separation of public officials' public and private activities than they were a few decades ago. At the same time, it has become much more common in our society for both spouses in a marriage to pursue active roles in business and public service. But that's a fact of current-day life and a good one. The Edwins' predicament vividly illustrates how troublesome that can be, and how difficult it is to deal with it even when those involved make an honest effort to avoid bad appearances. it To say that you own the skies but are unable to starve out the enemy flies in the face of reason.

"No," said Jackson. "Shoot them all. I do not wish them to be brave." Perhaps the most eloquent critic of war, as well as one of its most relentless practitioners, was Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. He was superintendent at Louisiana State Military Academy when the war broke out, to the enthusiastic huzzahs of his colleagues.

In exasperation and bitterness he told them: "You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!" And he made sure that it was. Years later, when he had captured Atlanta and ordered it evacuated of civilians, he responded to the Atlanta mayor's protest that the order would inflict hardship and suffering on the sick and aged.

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will," he said. "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against those terrible hardships of war." He evacuated the city and burned it when he left. Some 15 years after the war, in a speech to a military academy, he said: "I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine.

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell." Our Gen. Schwarzkopf, Storm-in' Norman, says that Sherman is one of his great heroes. I hope so. I have a feeling that if Sherman could have won a battle with air power and spared his troops, he would have done it and appropriations be damned.

Kaul It a syndicated columnist. The word from our military honchos is that a ground attack on Iraqi forces is "not imminent." They're saying it'll be three or four more weeks before we move. I wouldn't bet on that. I suspect that the great fear of our Army commanders is that the war will end before they can send in troops and demonstrate how necessary they are, thereby protecting their appropriation, not to mention their jobs. Does that sound excessively cynical? It shouldn't.

It's no accident that every military venture of recent years, no matter how piddling, has involved all of the armed forces, often to the detriment of the venture. Let the Air Force or the Navy win a war all by itself just once and, by God, those fools on the Hill might decide that we don't need an Army. That, I can only conclude, must be what's behind President Bush's continuing to claim that you can't drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait without a ground war. It's perfectly obvious that you can, of course. All you have to do is use your unchallenged air power to keep Iraq from resupplying its troops in Kuwait.

Sooner or later they will either have to surrender or try a suicidal breakout. It's a kind of industrial strength sanctions policy. To say that you own the skies but are unable to starve out the enemy flies in the face of reason. A ground war, of course, will produce casualties, but I imagine the planners are confident that they can bleed the Iraqis sufficiently with bombing to ensure a quick victory and keep those casualties at a minimum. That's the art of it; bringing the enemy to the brink of collapse with air power, but leaving something for the Army.

One can only hope that their timing is exquisite. In any case, the casualty issue is overrated. Generals do not gain glory and a place in history by and weep Politicians and roosters crow about what they intend to do. The difference is, roosters deliver what they promise. Too bad roosters can't run for president.

It's not that I'm disappointed in George Bush's failure to live up to so many of his promises remember "I'm going to be the education president?" Remember "We're going to balance this darned federal budget?" How about "No new taxes?" Remember that one? I mean, I am disappointed, but I guess I'm not surprised. The man, if he had his head screwed on right, should have known better than to promise those things in the first place, not that knowing better and running for president can be expected to go hand in hand. But what I'm really disappointed in is the obvious fact that George Bush hasn't yet learned to stop making promises he can't keep and must surely know he can't keep. Just this week he did it again. I'm talking about the newly released "Economic Report of the President." You probably read it.

My favorite part was where Bush admitted, finally, that we are indeed in a recession, then predicted a quick recovery that might well exceed the record-breaking economic expansion of the 1980s. Despite the economic events of 1990, we have reason for both hope and optimism in full measure as the nation approaches the next century," said Bush in the report. OK, maybe in the next century, but in the next year? This report is long on fine phrases about optimism and short on reasons for having any. Besides, it's worth remembering that this report comes from the man who said in last year's economic report that the economy was in "excellent health with not a hint of a recession in sight." Excuse me, sir, but could I borrow your eyeglasses for a minute? I want to see what you saw. The president, in the new economic report, blames the recession on the jump of oil prices and the lack of consumer confidence that came after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait last August.

Funny, but I remember a lot of talk about recession long before Saddam Hussein became a household word. I remember last spring a lot of new people were being added to the unemployment rolls. I remember last winter my neighbors in Massachusetts were telling me how they couldn't sell their house because the real estate market had turned so sour. I remember a lot of savings and loan institutions going belly up last year. I also remember the president saying last year that it wouldn't cost very much to help those savings and loan institutions.

A number of Democrats have pointed out that the president's new economic report glosses over certain tiny problems facing the economy at the moment, such as even more bank failures and a federal budget deficit expected to reach $318 billion this year. I know leaders are always dealers in hope, but to be president, must one be all hope and no memory? After all, it was only last year that Bush predicted the budget deficit for this year would be $100 billion. Now here's Bush telling us to cheer up again, that he's sure things are going to get better fast. He's not saying why or how, or what he intends to do to make that happen, but we're supposed to be cheered up anyway. Because he says so.

You know what? It's not enough. I don't believe him. And ifyou want to get right down to it, I'll tell you why. I don't btlieve George Bush's latest predictions about the economy because this is the same balance-the budget, no-new-taxes, education president that also promised me this wasn't going to be a long war. And I don't believe that either.

Not anymore. Do you? And so it goes. Ellerbee Is a syndicated columt 1st. holding down casualties. If that were true, the most famous general of the Civil War would be the North's George McClellan, a man of utmost caution who was celebrated chiefly for his reluctance to fight.

Historian Shelby Foote, in his marvelous "The Civil War: a narrative," writes that McClellan advanced in battle "with something of the manner of a man walking on slippery ice through a darkness filled with wolves." The great heroes of the Civil War, on the other hand, were thunderbolts like Grant and Lee, ruthless in their willingness to hurl their troops into the jaws of death. As Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest said: "War means fighting. And fighting means killing." Stonewall Jackson, another great hero, was equally candid. He once overheard a subordinate expressing admiration for the bravery of Union troops he had fought that day and regret at having to reward such courage with Welcome mat for 'copter To the person who complained recently about the sheriffs helicopter shining its lights in her windows: If this happens again, please send them to hover over my house.

Maybe I could scrap my expensive alarm system, reduce my insurance, and most important, put my .38 away instead of sleeping with it nearby. JOHN LYONS Rlalto Cable service is poor We've had cable TV since 1987; the service was OK until last summer. In the last month, my cable has gone out IS times. Cablevision told me the system is old and they're trying to upgrade it. They came out to the house and made some changes, but it's gone out four times since then.

In four years, rates have been raised $5. If Rialto is going to give Cablevision a franchise, our service should be better. If Cahlevision can't keep up the system, the city should find another cable company or Cablevision should lower the price. KELLY MULLIGAN Rlalto VOICE OF THE PEOPLE Use brains, not bombs Does anyone like war? I'm sorry to say the answer is yes all those vultures who make fortunes selling munitions, warplanes, warships, uniforms and body bags, like the 40,000 our leaders have already ordered. I'm sick of wars.

Now our honorable members of Congress have let our president declare another one. For what? Nobody knows. I propose that everyone with power to vote for war be sent to the front lines, they and their spouses, all the children and maybe some grandchildren too. We know men are raised to fight to settle differences, but nations should find other ways. We hate monsters like Hussein, but why not let Iraqis kick him out? The Iraqis are the victims now.

Why should we fight to avenge our hatred of one man? Use our heads, not our bombs! KAYSIBREL Yucalpa Freedom taken for granted Americans take freedom for granted. Sometimes we have to bear arms and fight for freedom. If we didn't, we could kiss freedom goodbye. We don't have to worry about where we worship or where we go to school, or ask permission before we travel In these great United States. This is what freedom means to me.

it, I'm upset when ome jerk burns aif. er, it should be ended quickly, because there's no other choice. The "show" that people don't get to see is what actually was destroyed and who was killed or injured. DANIEL J. SEIDMAN Redlands Elders should decide I'm tired of hearing the adage, "Old men send young men to war." Do you think it should be the other way around? Our military recruits able-bodied persons between 17 to 34.

We train them to operate the machines of war. We choose our politicians with some maturity and experience. How often do you think we'd elect 17-, 18- or 19-year-olds? It's those persons we think are most capable of making the proper decisions after careful consideration that we've put in positions of power. HOWARD J. WRYSINSKI Highland Canadian supports U.S.

I'm a Canadian visiting friends in San Bernardino this month. I strongly support my government's active role in the gulf war, as do 75 percent or Canadians. Saddam Hussein is a madman who must be stopped. He's on the verge of getting nuclear weapons to start a third world war. The Canadian government, under the leadership of my prime minister, Brian Mulroney, will stand side by side with our U.S.

friends. MARC WHITE Ontflo, Canada flag, defaces a national landmark or monument, or protests against a decision by the president to send our troops to a country that has had its freedom taken away. Pause when you pass our proud flag and say thanks to the veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice so you and I can enjoy freedom. PAUL WILSON San Bernardino Americans aren't fanatics How did James Watwood conclude that American blood is being spent over religious fanaticism? That may be what Saddam is spouting, but our country has no such policy. Watwood attacked Billy Graham, but Graham has stated that he never offered advice to any president.

Graham said he realizes his role is that of an evangelist. If he's there for men in high places, it's only upon invitation. Bush needs our support and, for those of us who believe in the power of prayer, he needs that, too. To admit that we don't know all the answers and need spiritual guidance is not a fault. It's a virtue.

FAITH BOWERS San Bernardino Illustration in poor taste I object to your using the USA Today illustration of the battleship Missouri. Calling death and destruction, which was obviously the mission of the Missouri, a "show" in the caption was not proper. Thanks for giving us a perspective of the power of the Missouri's guns, but this war shouldn't be celebrnj id. Rath Letters welcome AM letters must be signed. Please Include your address end a daytime telephone number.

Letters may be edited lor brevity. Address them to: Voice ol the People, The Sun, 394 N. Sen Bernardino, Calif. 82401. You may FAX letters to (714) S8K-8741..